5 Deliciously Illegal Food Crimes

Last night, thieves in Scotland stole a trailer full of nearly 10 tons of Kellogg's breakfast cereal bars worth £45,000. The heist, according to Detective Constable Martin Lumsden, "obviously involved an element of planning. We are reviewing CCTV footage and want to hear from anyone who may have been in or around the area of the lorry park around the time of this theft, or indeed the hours and days prior to the theft as those responsible may have been in area carrying out some form of reconnaissance and planning."

Breakfast bars aren't the only tasty treats to fall victim to theft. Here are five other foods that thieves have targeted.

2. MAPLE SYRUP

Aunt Jemima would be horrified: In 2012, police in Quebec made three arrests in the theft of 6 million pounds of syrup from Canada’s strategic maple syrup reserve. The thieves rented a separate portion of the reserve’s Saint-Louis-de-Blandford warehouse, which contained 16,000 barrels, for an unrelated business—and when no one was around, they siphoned syrup from those barrels. They even filled some of the 54-gallon barrels with water to disguise their crime, which was eventually discovered during one of the facility’s biannual inspections.

The thieves sold the syrup themselves from a shop in nearby New Brunswick and shipped it to buyers in Ontario, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Approximately two-thirds of the stolen syrup has been located, and authorities are trying to seize it—but even if they don’t, the owners of the pilfered product won’t lose: The syrup is insured.

3. CHEESE

Research has shown that cheese is the most stolen food in the world. Even so, it’s weird to read the words “international cheese smuggling network.” But that’s exactly what three people (one current and one former Canadian police officer and an American accomplice) were busted for in 2012. They were charged with buying brick cheese—which is commonly used for pizza toppings—in the United States and transporting it to Canada hidden in their vehicles. Because cheese in the U.S. costs one-third of what it does in Canada, drivers were able to make $1000 to $2000 a trip, for a total profit of $165,000.

4. GARLIC

In January, Sweden issued arrest warrants for Brits suspected of illegally importing Chinese garlic into the European Union between 2009 and 2010. The EU has a 9.6 percent duty and an additional $1600 per tonne on imported garlic; to get around the tax, which would have amounted to more than $13 million, the criminals shipped their stinky loot to Norway by boat, where it entered duty-free, then drove it into Sweden on trucks. It’s not the first time this has happened, either: There were two garlic smuggling busts in the UK in 2012.

5. MUENSTER CHEESE

In March 2013, an Illinois man was busted in New Jersey driving an 18-wheeler loaded with 42,000 pounds of pilfered Muenster cheese worth an estimated $200,000. The 34-year-old reportedly provided false paperwork to K&K Cheese in Cashton, Wisc., to get his hands on the cheese, and planned to sell the loot well under market value to retailers along the east coast. If the cheese is deemed safe after inspection, it will be donated to charity.

Leave the gun, take these facts about Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece adaptation of Mario Puzo’s gangster novel, which premiered in New York City 46 years ago (on March 15, 1972).

1. FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA WAS AT RISK OF BEING FIRED DURING PRODUCTION.

Francis Ford Coppola (who got the job because of his previous movie, The Rain People) wasn’t the first director Paramount Pictures had in mind for The Godfather. Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Richard Brooks, and Costa-Gavras all turned the job down. And after filming began, executives didn’t like the brooding, talky drama that Coppola was shooting.

The studio wanted a more salacious gangster movie, so it constantly threatened to fire Coppola (even going so far as to have stand-in directors waiting on set). Coppola was reportedly getting the ax until he shot the scene where Michael kills Sollozzo and McCluskey, which the executives saw and loved.

2. COPPOLA FOUGHT TO KEEP THE FAMOUS LOGO.

The studio originally wanted to scrap the now-iconic “puppet strings” logo (which was first created by graphic designer S. Neil Fujita for the novel’s release) with Puzo’s name above the title for the movie release, but Coppola insisted on keeping it because Puzo co-wrote the script with him.

3. HE ALSO FOUGHT TO KEEP THE STORY AS A PERIOD DRAMA.

As a cost-cutting measure, Paramount asked Coppola to modernize the script so the action took place in 1972 and to shoot the movie in Kansas City as a stand-in for the more expensive New York City. Coppola convinced them to keep the story in a post-World War II New York setting to maintain the integrity of the film.

4. FAMILY DINNERS HELPED EVERYONE GET IN CHARACTER.

Coppola held improvisational rehearsal sessions that simply consisted of the main cast sitting down in character for a family meal. The actors couldn’t break character, which Coppola saw as a way for the cast to organically establish the family roles seen in the final film.

5. PARAMOUNT DIDN’T WANT MARLON BRANDO FOR THE ROLE.

When Coppola initially mentioned Brando as a possibility for Vito Corleone, the head of Paramount, Charles Bluhdorn, told Coppola the actor would “never appear in a Paramount picture.”

The studio pushed the director to cast Laurence Olivier as Vito, before eventually agreeing to pursue Brando under three stringent conditions: 1) Brando had to do a screen test; 2) if cast, Brando would have to do the movie for free; and 3) Brando would have to personally put up a bond to make up for potential losses caused by his infamously bad on-set behavior.

Coppola surreptitiously lured the famously cagey Brando into what he called a “makeup test,” which in reality was the screen test the studio demanded. When Coppola showed the studio the test they liked it so much they dropped the second and third stipulations and agreed to let Brando be in the movie.

6. PACINO WASN’T THE FIRST CHOICE TO PLAY MICHAEL, EITHER.

The studio wanted Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal to play Michael Corleone, but Coppola always wanted Al Pacino. Other actors, like Martin Sheen and James Caan (who would go on to play Sonny), screen tested for Michael.

7. ROBERT DE NIRO AUDITIONED FOR SONNY.

Robert De Niro auditioned for the role of Sonny, but Coppola thought his personality was too violent for the role. De Niro would later appearas the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II, and win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work.

8. COPPOLA LET THE WEDDING PLAY OUT AND SHOT IT GUERILLA-STYLE.

To add a sense of reality to the wedding scene (and because he only had two days to shoot it), Coppola had the cast freely act out and improvise in the background. He then shot specific vignettes amongst the action.

9. COPPOLA TOOK ADVANTAGE OF MISTAKES.

Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi, was a professional wrestler before becoming an actor. He was so nervous delivering his lines to a legend like Brando during the scene in the Godfather’s study that he didn’t give one good take during an entire day’s shoot. Because he didn’t have time to reshoot the scene, Coppola added a new scene of Luca Brasi rehearsing his lines before seeing the Godfather to make Montana’s bad takes seem like Brasi was simply nervous to talk to the Godfather.

10. THE CORLEONE COMPOUND WAS A REAL LOCATION ON STATEN ISLAND.

The residence was put up for sale in 2014 for just under $3 million. That’s a price we can probably refuse.

11. THE GODFATHER’S CAT WAS A STRAY.

During his daily walks to the set, Coppola would often see a stray cat, and on the day of shooting the scenes in Vito’s study, Coppola took the cat and told Brando to improvise with it. The cat loved Brando so much that it sat in his lap during takes for the whole day.

12. PACINO WAS THE ARCHETYPICAL METHOD ACTOR.

He really had his jaw wired shut for the first part of the shoot after his character is punched in the face.

13. THE INFAMOUS HORSE’S HEAD WAS REAL.

The horse head in the movie producer’s bed wasn’t a prop. The production got a real horse’s head from a local dog food company.

14. THE “TAKE THE CANNOLI” LINE WAS IMPROVISED.

The line in the script only had actor Richard Castellano as Clemenza say “Leave the gun” after the hit on the mobster who ratted on the Corleones. He was inspired to make the addition after Coppola inserted a line in which the character’s wife asks him to buy cannoli for dessert.

15. THERE WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO BE AN INTERMISSION.

The 175-minute movie is long by Hollywood standards, and an intermission was going to be included just after the Solozzo/McCluskey shooting scene—but the idea was scrapped because the filmmakers thought it would ruin the momentum and take the audience out of the movie.

In 2011, NBC published a guide on how employees could "read the riot act" to their subordinates. Professional footballer Stéphane Mahé was once "read the riot act" after fouling a rival player so hard he needed four stitches. In Bibb County, Georgia, a Superior Court Judge "read the riot act" to a group of wayward teens in an effort to curb their bad behavior.

The idiom, which has been in use for centuries, is generally thought to mean the admonishment of a person or persons who have committed an error in judgment. But the origin of the term "riot act" concerns a very particular wrongdoing—an unlawful public assembly that peace officers of the 16th century fought with a pre-written warning to disperse or face serious repercussions. Like death.

Atlas Obscura reports that the riot act was first passed by British Parliament in 1714 and took effect on August 1, 1715. At its core, the Act served as what linguists refer to as a speech act: a word, phrase, or order that carries real weight. (Think of an ordained minister pronouncing a couple husband and wife.) If confronted with a rowdy crowd, an authoritarian would arrive and—this was crucial—read the Act aloud in order to serve formal notice that the parties involved were overstepping their bounds.

The Act was passed in haste because supporters of the Catholic Jacobite political movement had been voicing their disapproval of King George I. A "riot" was any group of 12 or more people that was engaged in public disharmony. Typically, the raucous formation would be given 60 minutes to take a hike. If not, their just punishment would be prison, labor, or death. If the peace officer believed danger was imminent, he wouldn't have to wait the whole hour: He could deputize citizens to try and break up the gathering.

To enforce the Act and any punishments, the officer had to punctuate the reading by shouting, "God save the King!"

Scholars have wondered how successful such orators were in scolding a large assembly of angry protestors. In 1768, the answer was: not very. People opposing the imprisonment of radical John Wilkes ignored the Riot Act and suffered shots of musket ball, which killed seven.

The Riot Act was officially repealed in England and Wales in 1967 as part of some legislative housekeeping. Today, it's almost always used as a figure of speech, although Belize still recognizes it as a meaningful method of crowd dispersal. In 2017, police officers drew criticism for launching tear gas into a People's United Party protest without first reading them the Riot Act.

Questioned by a reporter, assistant commissioner of police Edward Broaster said that the incident didn't "meet the threshold" for busting out the paperwork.